Carson Patterson - Coaching and athlete preparation

Sport scientist and conditioning coach. Working mainly with alpine skiers, but other sports as well. My competitive athletic background was in track and field (110m hurdles), football and rugby. Coaching since 1989. Will give my thoughts on preparing athletes, and at times on other things as well, as sport means much to me, but is not everything. Enjoy!

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Just got
back from SWIS 2016, an amazing seminar in which “the Top Powerlifters,
Bodybuilders, Doctors, Therapists, Trainers, Strength Coaches, and
Nutritionists all presented their best information.” http://swis.ca/swis-symposium-2016/

It was a
great experience! Now I need to go over the seminars again (Ken Kinakin, the
organizer of this brilliant event, had videos of every presentation made and
makes them available to the attendees), digest the info and then figure out how
to apply much of it.

As I mature
as a coach, I always think during a lecture or workshop that I attend: “How can
I use this great information? When can I implement it?”.

I am doing a
disservice to myself and my athletes if I do not USE the information I gathered
at SWIS 2016. No, I am not going to kid you and say that I will implement
everything I heard and learned about. But I will review much of what I heard
and find ways to use it to make my athletes better.

You have
clothes in your wardrobe that you never wear. I am not talking about your
wedding dress, or the suit that you wear to weddings and funerals. I am talking
about 80% of what is hanging in your closet. Don’t do that with your
“knowledge”.

Don’t be
that guy who has attended tons of workshops and is still doing exactly the same
things he was doing 5 years ago. Do you have a list of courses and seminars
that you have attended as long as your arm and are not taking advantage of the
tools you were exposed to?

Sunday, March 6, 2016

As a conditioning coach working with
athletes in a variety of sports, it is often a goal to make an athlete
stronger. I do not work with “strength” athletes, i.e. where success is
measured by the amount of weight on the bar (powerlifting and weightlifting). Strength
is just one piece of the conditioning pie, but an important piece. Strength fascinates
me - to study (the theory) and to make my athletes stronger (the practice).

One pet peeve of mine is that many
athletes are impatient and just want to go “balls to the wall” when they are
trying to improve their one repetition maximum. I believe that if you want to
get stronger (increased maximal strength) you must lift heavy weights, but you
cannot do this all the time. You need a plan that will bring you to your goals
or new PRs, and you need patience and intelligence.

I had the pleasure of attending a
weightlifting seminar a week ago led by Dmitry Klokov, the Russian weightlifter. It was in
Innsbruck, organized by Crossfit Innsbruck head coach and owner Tom Hölzl. Klokov
is a world champion weightlifter, and won a silver medal at the 2008 Olympics. Here
is a link to a list of his best lifts; there is a video also on this page:

I was very happy to hear that a
monster like Klokov preaches patience and prudence in strength training. I am
going to give a couple of examples of other strength experts who also preach
that patience and brains will conquer balls and ego over time.

Jim Wendler has a great lifting system
known as 5/3/1. He has squatted 1000 lbs. and benched 675 lbs. This is a direct
quote from Wendler’s article in T Nation:

While it may seem counter intuitive to take weight off the bar when the
goal is to add weight to it, starting lighter allows you more room to progress
forward. This is a very hard pill to swallow for most lifters. They want to
start heavy and they want to start now.

This is nothing more than ego, and nothing will destroy a lifter faster,
or for longer, than ego.

Mark “Smelly” Bell, owner of the Supertraining Gym, and a very
accomplished powerlifter, says in his seminar with aspiring NFL combine
hopefuls helping them with their 225 lbs. max reps training, says (my words,
his are similar in the video):

You don’t need to lift insane heavy weights to get stronger. That you
can go 100 – 105% ONLY ON OCCASION! He feels that 90-95% of your training
should look clean (meaning lifting with good technique). Here is the link to
the video:

The take home message is that when you want to get stronger, you should
leave your ego at the door and start with conservative loads to make sure that
you can progress every workout as you move to increase your maximal strength. You
should also lift with the best possible technique. This will decrease your risk
of injury. These are simple concepts, but they are too rarely used.

You must have a plan; you have to know when to go “hard” and when to be
“smart”. And training smart is almost always a better plan than training
“hard”. Yes, you can lift heavy at times if you are ready, but be smart and be
patient.

This season (2015-16) Peter Penz and
Georg Fischler won a silver medal in men’s doubles at the FIL luge world
championships, and Janine Flock also won silver in the IBSF women’s skeleton
world championships. I was responsible for their strength training. I don’t
often publicly put notches on my belt when my athletes have success, because I
am just part of a bigger team that works with these athletes.

In our Olympic training center, we
have physiotherapists, masseurs, sport psychologists and a nutritionist who
work with our athletes. Then there are the specific sport coach and assistant
coaches, and the technicians who work on the equipment; the list goes on and
on. At the risk of omitting other important people involved I will simply say
that this list is not complete. I have not listed all the people who
contributed to the success. Some of my coaching colleagues whom I work with also
contribute to the training. There are really too many people involved for me to
“take credit”.

Why do I then write about these
athletes in this case? To show that we are working with real athletes in the
real world, and indeed it is sometimes a challenge to get them stronger and to
keep them patient at the same time. They are highly motivated, and they work
hard. A huge part of my job is to make sure that they also work smart - lift with good technique, and know WHEN to go heavy!

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Last week I watched Red Army, a documentary about
Soviet hockey in the 80s directed by Gabe Polsky. Great film, and even if you
are not a hockey fan it is well worth watching.

This film brought back a memory for me from my days of
testing athletes in the Human Performance Lab in the 90s. We tested the Calgary
Flames every year at the start of their training camp, with a VO2max and also a
Wingate test (both on cycle ergometers).

I was very excited when Sergei Makarov got onto the
bike and I was about to test him. This was a big deal for me, because Soviet
hockey held a mystique for me as a hockey-mad kid growing up in Canada in the 70s.

Back then the Russians were portrayed as robots with
unbelievable levels of fitness, and now I was going to test one of the very
best (three-time Soviet Player of the Year, the M in the legendary KLM line and
member of the IIHF All Centennial Team).

Now I was going to see how fit a Russian hockey robot
was! Sergei spoke no English (at least not on that day in the lab) and we
started the test. The test starts out easy, and gets gradually tougher. As we
got to the point when the test just starts to get interesting, at about the
anaerobic threshold, I cheered him on and said that now the “real” test was
beginning. He pedaled for about another 30 seconds, and then just stopped pedaling.

He just stopped.

He just stopped.

He may have broken a sweat, I can’t remember, but he
was obviously not in discomfort or having any problems. WTF?

Yes, I repeated that he stopped, because I was
completely in shock at that moment. I was speechless.

Now that many years have passed, I don’t feel bad
airing this story, as it is old news. The informed consent form that the
athletes signed ensured them that the results were confidential. I won’t say
what his VO2 was, because I can’t remember and if I could, well, it’s
confidential information!

So why am I telling this story? In my mind I finally
saw this from another point of view. I DO NOT KNOW why he gave up, I can only
speculate.

Here is my new take: he had grown up and played in the
Soviet system, and undoubtedly was put through a very rigorous fitness program.
He was over 30 years old, had a solid reputation, and knew that he was in
Calgary to contribute offense to the team. He had no need to demonstrate his
fitness, had a contract and was NHL rookie of the year the previous season. He
had probably done so many ridiculous sport science tests in the USSR that he
just said “Ебать его”.

So…. my point is that with his experience and
self-confidence, he decided that this test was not a priority for him.

I AM NOT encouraging athletes or coaches to think that
fitness is not important.

But I am saying that sometimes some athletes do not
look at the big picture and figure out what to prioritize. They don’t know, or
don’t want to know what are the things that they truly need to focus on, or
improve.

These athletes with the wrong priorities may be very
fit, or very unfit. But what is stopping them from reaching the next level? Two
types of athletes who don’t work smart are: the ego strokers, and the guilty hard
workers.

A classic example of ego stroking is if you give
athletes an optional workout to train whatever they want, the guy with the big
bench will train bench. The guy who can hit 10 3-pointers in a row will go
shoot. I think that you get the idea.

The problem with this is that hard work alone will not
make an athlete successful. But some feel that hard work is the cure-all for
them. It is that old “Protestant work ethic”.

I have seen some athletes work very hard, but are,
well, to be blunt, just being stupid. Yes, stupid. I had an athlete who was
very fit, was a true symbol and example of hard work and determination, but
needed to work on other aspects of performance. This was a very successful
athlete, but had room to improve. And fitness was not one of the areas that
needed improvement. This is not blatant self-promotion as the conditioning
coach - this athlete was very fit before working with me. This athlete did get
stronger and improved aerobic fitness with me. But other aspects needed work.

Working harder is not working smarter. You have to
figure out how much energy is needed to maintain excellent fitness, and then prioritize:
invest your energy in other parts of your game if those other parts are holding
you back.

I use the analogy of investing money. Do you pick the
investment specialist who promises that he will work “hard” on your investments
and get you 3% profit, or the guy who says he can get you 6% but does not discuss
the “hard work”? Obviously this is a complicated example, but it is about the
BOTTOM LINE. If you can work 40 hours a week and earn x dollars, why work 60
hours for the same salary?

Many of us actually feel guilty if we aren't working much too hard. And we tend to think very highly of
people who hate what they do; that is irrationally seen as somehow more
virtuous than having a job one loves!

Athletes need to be sure that the hard work is
necessary, and moving them in the right direction. They and their coaches need
to analyse their performance, figure out what is needed for success, and decide
if they have what it takes to succeed. This process is not easy.

It must be objective. It is no fun to list weaknesses.
It is no fun to confront weaknesses.

I get a kick out of conditioning coaches who brag
about how fit or strong their athletes are. How much can Usain Bolt squat? What
does Tom Brady bench?

I remember talking to a Norwegian ski coach who told me
that Kjetil Andre Aamodt had an amazing work ethic in training. He had spectacular
success, is in fact the most successful alpine ski racer in history when using
Olympic and world championship medals as the measuring stick.

Aamodt squatted 220 kg at a bodyweight of 85 kg. We
were in the Olympiatoppen (Oympic Training Center) in Oslo in 2012 and Aamodt
still had the record for the best overall fitness score in the tests that the
Norwegians put their athletes through (he retired in 2007).

The same ski coach told me that Aamodt’s teammate, Lasse Kjus, on the other hand, was lazy. I have a hard time believing this, but he
could very well have looked lazy when training with an animal like Aamodt. But
Kjus was no slouch! He is second only to Aamodt in Olympic and world
championship medals!

There is special device (the gliding tester) in
Austria which ski racers use with their own skis and boots to test their gliding
position and see if they are flat on their skis in their tuck position. Once when
Kjus was using this device he and his ski boot technician fiddled and faddled for
HOURS until he was satisfied with his boots and his position on his skis.

This is NOT a stereotypical lazy athlete. But this is
an example of investing his time in other things which would enable him to be
successful.

As a conditioning coach I want to make my athletes
stronger, faster, fitter. But I recognize that conditioning is only a slice of
the success pie. By working with the athlete, and the event coach (or coaches)
and other support staff I can see the big picture, prioritize and contribute to
my athlete’s success.

And not just go to games, meets, races or tournaments
to brag about how much Johnny can bench, or how high Sergei's VO2max is.

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Got the last of my presents wrapped, and was wondering what
is the best gift to give an athlete. As a coach you may not be able to GIVE it,
but you can enhance and nurture it.

Self-esteem is one of the most precious things that a person
can have.

What got me thinking about this was a 6-year-old boy I know.
He is a very special little guy, the son of a girlfriend of ours. He celebrated
his 6th birthday not too long ago in a public facility that offers
the opportunity for kids to have parties. He and 7 friends were very wound up
and the moms left the kids in the hands of an adult who supervised them during
the party. She had to scold them a bit because they were pretty rambunctious.
When it was all over, the little guy told the lady who supervised them that it
was the worst birthday he had ever had and that she ruined it for him and his
friends with her strict behavior and scolding. The adult supervisor was amazed
at this little guy giving her crap. I laughed SO hard when my wife told me this
story.

I immediately replied that I would not have had the stones
at 12 years of age to do what he did at 6. I probably wouldn’t have had them at
18 either! I was brought in a world in which many kids were raised with the
motto “children are meant to be seen, not heard.” I DID NOT have a terrible
childhood, my dad was a huge part of my sporting career, and I am not going to
grind an axe about my past. But I will say that my dad seldom asked for my
opinion was as a kid, and I learned to keep my ideas and opinions to myself.
There were times that he berated me for not standing up for myself with other
people. But where should I have learned to value my own opinion and ideas?

Where does self-esteem come from? How does an athlete learn
that he or she is a special person, with or without a great sporting
performance? When does an athlete trust her/himself?

I try to get athletes as self-reliant as possible. Why?
Because I can’t swim, sprint, slide, jump or fight for them. They must perform.
Without me.

I encourage them to make decisions in the weight room, on
the track, or wherever. Sometimes after a good lift one will ask me “how much
should I load up now?” Sometimes I give an opinion, sometimes I tell them that
they can answer that question better than me – after all, they just lifted the
last load, and I cannot FEEL how heavy the bar was.

I am NOT the all-knowing, almighty, omnipotent coach. I am a
guide to their inner self. They must unlock their potential. I want to empower
them.

I see myself as a consultant. If they cannot talk to me as
an equal, share their opinion, express their view, how can they dominate their
opponents?

Do you discuss things with your athletes, or dictate to
them? Who is the boss?

This depends on the level of the athlete, and the experience
of the athlete. But I do want their self-esteem, self-confidence and self-reliance
to grow during their time with me.

I am not a psychologist; I don’t know where or when this
mysterious entity known as self-esteem is developed. But I think that when am
athlete comes to me I can nurture it, and improve it. I do know that a coach can
negatively impact self-esteem. And if I do this as a coach, shame on me.

Not all of my athletes will win Olympic gold. But I can
empower every one of them as athletes, and they can use the tools they develop
to excel in other areas of later life.

Friday, October 24, 2014

I am in Abano Terme, Italy, enjoying the information being shared at the International Congress of Strength Training.

Dr. Robert Newton, an internationally known expert on strength and power training from Australia, gave a interesting presentation. He discussed strength and power in sport, and the importance of getting athletes strong.

He told us how he predicted that Australia would have a poor performance in the 2012 Olympics in London 5 months before the games, which did not make him popular in Australia. Unfortunately he was correct. He saw a trend in Australian elite sport of less emphasis on strength and power and felt that this would have dire consequences.

We test the Austrian ski team at the University of Innsbruck with a repeated loaded jump test. Women perform counter movement jumps with a barbell equivalent to 20% of body weight. So a 60 kg woman will jump with a 12 kg bar. A couple of years ago I noticed that the women were producing more power during this test. I talked to the conditioning coach and he told me that they were doing little or no strength endurance work in the gym and concentrating on maximal strength and power work. I had been preaching this for a while, and was glad to hear that the skiers were training more for strength and power. Their strength endurance training was almost exclusively done with ski training on snow.

In the past they had done much strength endurance work in the weight room. I have a philosophical problem with power athletes (skiing is in my mind a power sport) doing strength endurance work with weights when their maximal strength levels are not optimal.

Strength endurance is an important quality which ski racers need, this cannot be disputed. The shortest alpine ski event is slalom, with races sometimes just over a minute for women. The longest women's race is approximately 2 minutes, usually the downhill in Cortina. So anaerobic fitness and the ability to maintain power over 1 to 2 minutes is critical.

But if an athlete is weak, training for strength endurance is counterproductive. Get strong, then train to extend this strength, or improve your work capacity. If you are weak and train to extend your poor strength over a longer period of time, you are simply extending a poor performance. Get stronger first, then train to maintain this strength over the period you need for your sport. Seems pretty logical to me.

In the case of power athletes who have little or no need for strength endurance and want to express force in a short period of time, maximal strength should also be emphasized. Some sport movements are so fast or so powerful that they cannot be simulated in a weight room. Charlie Francis, the coach of Ben Johnson ( and many other very fast athletes) believed that the power produced in the hip joint by a world class sprinter on the track could not be duplicated in the weight room. The joint angular velocities were simply too high. With Ben he used heavy squats (600 lbs for 6 reps) to become more powerful on the track. Ben also benched over 400 lbs at a body weight of 175 lbs.

If a power athlete is weak and is performing power work in the gym, they may be wasting time. Get strong first, then get powerful.

Mark Rippetoe wrote an interesting article in t-nation about the state of strength and conditioning coaching and how more emphasis needs to be put on maximal strength.

He explained the relationship between maximal strength and power.

P = F x v. P is power, F is force and v is velocity.

He basically said that if I can improve my ability to produce force, I will be more powerful.

Maximal strength is THE basic strength quality for all other expressions of strength, including power and strength endurance. Get strong and get better.

I am obviously simplifying things here, but I write more about the philosophy of training, and leave the "how" to others who do a great job of presenting and describing programs on a number of platforms on the net.

I could discuss the use of plyometrics in the program, and when to integrate power and/or strength endurance into the strength program, but I believe that many athletes (yes, elite athletes) could improve performance simply by getting stronger.

I am NOT taking the stand of some STRENGTH and conditioning coaches who concentrate solely on strength. There are many ways to make an athlete better - improving speed, flexibility, agility, etc., without weights. And the coach has to ensure that the strength program is having no negative effects on more important aspects of the athlete's performance.

There are examples of very powerful athletes who did little or no weight training. Carl Lewis is perhaps the most prominent example, and Obadele Thompson (9.87 100m, 19.97 200m) was described by Dan Pfaff as having "an iron allergy".

There are always exceptions. But in general if you can get an athlete stronger without interfering with their technical and tactical training, you will improve performance. So lose your iron allergy and get better by getting stronger.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Bode Miller is the most interesting ski racer on the world
cup circuit right now. No one has had as much personality in the white circus
since Alberto Tomba. Bode speaks his mind, he is his own man and he has
accomplished A LOT in alpine ski racing. I have never spoken with him, but have
talked to people who have coached him or worked with him and I believe that he
is a very cerebral athlete. I respect his achievements but I respect even more
that he says and does what he feels is best for him. I also think that he is
good for world cup skiing, because it has been very conservative and at times,
well, has very little public personality (politically correct way to say
boring).

So this is not a roast of Bode. But I am using him as an
example that as an athlete you have to seize the moment, because it may never
come again.

Bode is the most successful male American ski racer ever,
and certainly the most well-known. But his “legacy” could have been truly amazing.He already has 5 Olympic medals (1 gold, 3
silver and 1 bronze) and could win more in Sochi. Kjetil Andre’ Aamodt has the
most alpine skiing Olympic medals (8 total, 4 gold). I doubt that Bode can win
3 medals in Sochi now (after no medal in downhill), and almost certainly he
will not win 3 gold. So Aamodt’s place in history is secure for now.

In Torino, one of the most publicized photos of the 2006
Winter Olympic Games was Bode dancing with a girl with a drink in his hand,
that glassy look in his eyes and his middle finger aimed at the camera. I was
personally upset with him at that time, not because he was screwing up his
chance to make history, but because of his failure as a role model. I am sure
that he didn’t want to be one, but by being a poster child for Nike, he
automatically became one. As far as him blowing his chances to win medals (he
had 8 world cup podiums in that 2006 season so he was a top contender), I
figured that that was his business, not mine, not anyone else’s. Many Americans
had a different opinion, and he was dragged over the coals by the media.

He did very poorly in Torino (by standards of others, judged
on world cup results that season), with 2 DNFs and 1 DQ. His other results were
5th and 6th. But hey, he partied!

He is a fierce competitor, so of course he is not happy after
being so fast in training. Also, this is most likely his last Olympics, and he
probably wants to go out with a bang. Even for Bode the chances at glory are
finite.

Time is running out. I surmise that the pain of knowing that
his Olympic career is almost over would be less if he knew that he had always competed
to his potential. But that’s my opinion. I am 100% convinced that Bode does not
care what I think. But that is not the point of this post.

The moral of this story is that for many of us, the big
chance in life does not come around more than once. And for all of us, the
chances DO end eventually. This is Bode’s 5th Olympics, but he did
blow his chance at becoming a rare Olympic legend.

He has had (is having!) an amazing career, but he did not
achieve all that he could have.

If any of you Olympians read this, consider what you want to
do in Sochi. Most of you will not win medals. But do you want to compete at
your best, to walk away and 30 years from now be satisfied that you gave your
best, and were your best?

Is your Olympic dream partying, blogging, posting on
facebook, tweeting, or getting as many selfies with famous athletes as
possible? Then go for it.

Don’t do it for me, or your coach, or whoever. Do what YOU
want to do. But do it 100%.

NOW you have to know why are you doing it, and consider if
you will be happy with your deeds 30 years from now. Because A LOT of you will
only get ONE chance to write your Olympic story.

About Me

I am currently coaching athletes at the Campus Sport Tirol Innsbruck Olympiazentrum. This is part of the Department of Sport Science at the University of Innsbruck.
My responsibilities include coaching, testing athletes, and teaching. I am from Calgary Alberta Canada, and have been in Innsbruck since 1994.
BPE (Calgary), M.A. Exercise Physiology (Victoria), CSCS, PhD candidate, coaching since 1989.
My experience as a conditioning coach: Austria alpine ski team (men's World Cup downhill group) Alpine Canada (men's alpine groups) Bobsleigh Canada (men's WC sprint coach) & Austrian Bobsleigh Federation (conditioning men's WC). I was a sprint coach in Canada (Calgary Spartans, CALTAF).
I have worked with athletes and coaches from a number of countries in sports such as alpine skiing, athletics, bobsleigh, cycling, handball, ice hockey, luge, skeleton, swimming, Tae Kwon Do, to name a few. Some have won Olympic and World Championships medals, more have taught me much about sport, life and myself.
I also worked in the Human Performance Lab at the University of Calgary under Dr. David Smith, performing physiological tests on elite athletes.